Soaring Paragliding ~ the most fun you can have with your pants on.

A paraglider is the worlds lightest aircraft and remarkably easy to learn how to fly. It is not, however, without hazard (see "recognizing otis") and most certainly not for eveyrone.. Aviation in all it's forms tends to reward those who pay attention to details and (sooner or later) spank those who do not. While a paraglider may be the most simple of all aircraft, it is also extremely light and as such, more subject to the whims of atmospheric nature than any other.

And atmospheric nature is complex, some elements of which we may never completely understand. I like to tell people that flying days are like snowflakes, that "there have never been two exactly alike and there never will be", immediately upon which they invariably look upon me as they would some leftover fruitcake, but it's true. Just because the sun is shining and there's little wind on the water doesn't necessarily mean you won't get your butt spanked. if for example, there happens to be an organized jetstream overhead. A good primer on the subject from a paraglider driver's point of view is "Understanding the Sky" by Dennis Pagan, available here.

Thanks to the internet there is now a plethora of weather data available at the click of a mouse, so there really is no good excuse for "getting spanked" these days. Here is just one example of a weather link page for North Central Washington: Chelan Weather

One of the best schools in the U.S. is Aerial Paragliding in Cashmere, Washington, run by Denise Reed and Doug Stroop, USHGA's 2004 instructor's of the year. Not only are they very good at conveying the mechanics of paraglider flight, but they won't let you get away without at least a solid elementary foundation of how to keep yourself out of harms way through that early period of having "more enthusiasm than good sense".

Soaring a paraglider involves riding rising columns of warm air aloft, sometimes to great height (I made it to 14,000' eight times in August 2004) and literally hanging out for hours at a time. Some of the younger crowd are gung ho about open distance cross country flying, the record for which is 263 miles. You can even hang a backpack style power unit on and motor around but for me it would be akin to putting an outboard on a sea kayak.

Paragliders may very well be the ultimate freedom machine, at least most of the time. If you can see rivets on the side of a giant lawn dart going by at 600 miles an hour it may take the euphoric sensation away for a moment or two. But what the hell, the biggest octopus in the world live in Puget Sound and that wouldn't keep you from paddling around out there in a kayak would it? Yeeeikes!